Jewel of the Underground

By Peter Tyson

Posted 10.01.02

NOVA

On Memorial Day, 1986, at the bottom of a small cave in New Mexico's Guadalupe Mountains, a group of cavers broke through a rubble pile into a long, downward-sloping passage. It proved to be the entrance shaft to one of the largest, deepest, and most fantastically decorated caves in the Americas. In this slide show, take a peek inside Lechuguilla, as the cave is known. This may be the only peek you'll get: To preserve its pristine nature, the National Park Service keeps the cave closed to the public.

Sources

The photographs in this feature appear in the book Lechuguilla: Jewel of the Underground, and they were taken by photographers Sura Ballmann, Kevin Downey, and Urs Widmer, with the help of various assistants.

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